The reason that most are nostalgic for the past is not because things were better “back then,” but because responsibilities were different. For those who kvetch about their present, it’s because their childhood didn’t involve worry about clothes, food, or housing and could, instead, focus on the possibilities of growing up. In this period, the necessities are covered, stress is low, and our dreams feel like they could be at our fingertips if we only breathed them into existence. Then we grow up, step out into the world, and it’s little more than persistent pressure to achieve each day. One day, we may wake up wondering how we got to where we are and how it could be so far from where we imagined. Blending narrative and documentary techniques, director/co-writer Derek Shane Garcia (Over Here; City of Parks) delves into this in his latest feature A/way, a drama centering a young adult at a pivotal crossroads moment that’s as specific to the character’s experience as it is universal to us all.
Rosie McDonald as Anna in A/WAY. Photo courtesy of Unique DnA Film.
Travel journalist Anna (Rosie McDonald) is on-assignment in Martinique, a part of the French West Indies, interviewing locals and exploring the island. In the moments of contemplative quiet between engaging conversations, Anna grapples with the crossroads she faces in light of a recent parental loss and profound questioning of purpose.
L-R: Eva Dorrepaal as Anna’s Mother and Rosie McDonald as Anna in A/WAY. Photo courtesy of Unique DnA Film.
Running just over an hour is not what makes Garcia’s A/way stand out, though that is an atypical length for a dramatic feature. Rather, what sets it apart is the technical approach to the narrative. Written by Garcia (Don’t Cry Yet), McDonald (Don’t Cry Yet), and James Moccia (Colorblind), A/way is constructed of both scripted and guided moments. Incorporating several non-actors in the Martinique scenes, the press release states that McDonald provided questions to each of the interviewees before traveling to shoot and then Garcia constructed a larger narrative around these moments. If one hadn’t guessed that these sequences were more off-the-cuff before seeing the credits list them as themselves, the stories they told and the way they told them, in conjunction with a cinéma vérité-style of documentary cinematography certainly generate the sensation. There’s a looseness to the way Liam Lee (My Mom Jayne) captures the interviews and additional scenes in Martinique, a flowing and uncertain style denoting someone trying to find the right position at all times compared to the majority of scenes outside Martinique conveying a more structured, typical narrative frame for each sequence. For instance, as Rosie walks on a beach with one of the interviewees, the camera shifts between following and leading them on the shore, a natural bobbing occurring as the camera is moved along the sand; whereas in the scene between past Anna and Geoff (Aaron Lee Wright), the camera is still in its positioning, conveying stability for Anna and traditional storytelling for the audience. The contrast in shooting styles does communicate the internal and external of Anna’s arc, the ways in which she felt stable before versus uncertain now, while also delineating memory of the past (locked in a perspective) and action of the present (fluid, changing, unpredictable). The opening sequence, which finds Anna both out of and inside Martinique exploring and then swimming at a waterfall, creates a sensation through this combined technique of someone wrestling with themselves in a temporal sense, inserting within A/way a chronal distortion that Garcia can then utilize for other sequences that can be more experimental and dreamlike.
The downside is that sometimes the scripted portions don’t always match the energy and tone of the present, more improvised scenes. One can’t help but wonder if that’s because the past can be viewed as Anna’s memory versus a flashback. The distinction here is critical. A flashback often maintains audience distance, allowing us to view something as it happened with our interpretation shaped by the performance of the cast and the context of the scene/film’s narrative. If it’s a memory, however, this can be viewed as entirely based on Anna’s perspective which gives each sequence a different feeling in which reality is less important as emotions tend to anchor our memories more than the words or actions within them. This may be why some of the scripted scenes shot/located in New York contain massive emotional swings (conversation with a friend; a study date with Geoff) which might otherwise seem out of place within the larger context of the piece. It’s not that the scenes — within the context of Anna’s story regarding her own life and dreams compared to the path and dreams of her mother, which serves as the primary exploration of the film — don’t have purpose or intention in the moment, it’s that they don’t always fit amid the whole outside of them. Again, perhaps they feel this way when viewed as memory because what happens in our lives versus what we remember feeling can be vastly different and, with so much of the narrative being about the intersection of perception and reality in Anna’s life, this feels critical to the work as a whole.
Rosie McDonald as Anna in A/WAY. Photo courtesy of Unique DnA Film.
Even with this scene of partial imbalance in the energy, McDonald, as the lead actor and the figure upon which the entire narrative revolves, is magnetic. We very quickly come to see her as someone we can relate to, regardless of time, place, or age. Even when parts of the film evoke a certain recapturing of one’s groove through the beautiful landscape and energy-enhancing people she meets, McDonald manages to anchor Anna so that Anna doesn’t become more idea of a person than a whole figure. We can see how, just like with anyone struggling with grief, it can come in waves that seem to drown us in one moment and offer comfort in another spawned by nothing more than a personal memory or a reading of someone else’s. McDonald makes the very real sense of figurative loss of self-tangible so that the metaphors within the film aren’t lost. Through choices big and small, the audience never loses sight of the fact that our time is fleeting, we all have a story to tell, and the one thing we all have in common is that none of us have anything figured out.
Rosie McDonald as Anna in A/WAY. Photo courtesy of Unique DnA Film.
There are a variety of ways to look at our lives, but most approach things with a binary good or bad. Even if things didn’t work out as intended, one can still find contentment if one remains open to it. What A/way posits isn’t so much that contentment matters, but that where we find that sense of peace is defining. Sometimes it’s in learning that our dreams are exactly that, ephemeral concepts with no chance of achieving, and, sometimes, it’s in learning that the way we perceived the construction of our dreams is the thing that needs restructuring in order to be achieved. This is a long way to say that our perception defines our reality and that’s shaped by our experiences and those who gave us the space to have them. When we lose those people, we are forced to restructure how we see ourselves and our places in the world, often by seeing the ones we lost as people and not the figureheads we once knew. Through that grief, McDonald, Moccia, and Garcia present a method to move away from ourselves and toward who we want to be.
Available on VOD and digital June 26th, 2025.
Available on Tubi March 20th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Unique DnA Films A/way webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
Leave a Reply